Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

A Beautiful Body

Now that the Academy Awards are out of the way (and the winning picture was predicted in this space months ago, establishing my film expertise), I can reveal this idea for a sure-fire-Oscar topical screenplay.

The protagonist is a young investigative pundit named Vera Similitude -- fresh-faced, appealingly multiethnic, with a heart of lead.

Her antagonist is the terrorist-accountant Max Mirror, head of NightmareWorks Productions. The bearded mogul is obsessed with a lust to win -- at all costs -- an Oscar for his anti-sexist bioepic, ''A Beautiful Body.'' This luminous film is based loosely on the life of Albert Einstein's Hungarian wife, the brilliant and gorgeous Mileva, who gave her husband the idea for relativity but was cruelly thrown over by Al and denied a Nobel Prize.

The love-hate interest is James Sweetwater, a press agent and bald political hatchet man. He is hired by the venal studio chief to savage the reputation of the leading rival for the best-picture Oscar, ''Lady of the Flings,'' a competing bioepic about high times and low doings in Middle Earth.

Now to the pre-treatment pitch of my film blanche. It exploits (1) a crossing-over of the politics of personal destruction to the movie industry; (2) the Stoned discovery of the box-office appeal of twisted history; and (3) current widespread suspicion of creative accountants and men with beards.

Open behind the titles and credits in a movie War Room, dominated by its wall poster, ''It's the Oscar, Stupid.'' The kinetic, bald Sweetwater, dressed in an Armani libel suit, is on one of his four ringing and vibrating cellphones to a shouting mogul.

We are made privy to a conspiracy to besmear the real-life heroine of ''Lady of the Flings'' as a gay homophobic racist lefty troglodyte mole. No Motion Picture Academy member could then vote for the picture, loosely based on her louche Bovarian life.

''It means billions to Max Mirror,'' Sweetwater tells his troops. ''When 'Beautiful Body' wins, the stock of NightmareWorks will skyrocket and his hyperleveraged company will never have to expense his million options.''

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst (and what's a pitch without an ''unbeknownst''?) to the conspirators, Vera Similitude is nauseated by what she hears over her roving wiretap on Sweetwater's cells. After an ink-stained retch, she marches up to Max Mirror's luxurious suite and confronts him with what she has learned. Vera threatens to expose all in her globally syndicated newspaper and streaming-media column.

Unbeknownst to the intrepid pundit, however, Max Mirror has just megamerged his film company with her news organization. As her new boss, Max orders Vera to kill the story of his venality and to join forces with Sweetwater to besmear ''Flings'' and its cast of a thousand aspersions.

This presents Vera with an ethical dilemma. Does she owe her professional streaming-media loyalty to her new multimedia employer? Or will journalism's vestigial virginity turn her into a despised whistle-blower?

Big scene between Similitude and Sweetwater at midnight in the Oscar War Room: she seduces him vigorously, learning all about the award-winning conspiracy, while earning my film the coveted ''R'' rating for sexual content, strong language, some violence and full-frontal scalp nudity.

Madly in love with Vera, the hapless hatchet man further reveals what his partner -- who is secretly handling a ''Flings'' campaign to besmear Max's NightmareWorks -- has discovered: that Mileva Einstein, subject of ''Beautiful Body,'' was in reality plain and dumpy, and never thought her husband's relativity theory was so special. If that truth gets out, ''Flings'' would surely win.

Together, the ethically conflicted couple do a power breakfast with the chief defender of the competition in ideas: the dreaded Federal Communications Trustbuster known as the Equivocator. After the waffles, he decides against deciding. ''You're not called 'the Equivocator' for nothing,'' say the awed lovers.